Q. Can you please shed some light on why when I have beautiful grandchildren, children and husband that I would prefer to sit and meditate all day. Sometimes I feel very ungrateful for all I have. Should I be happy to 'have my cake and eat it too' even though I often feel like I am two different people.

A. It is totally natural that you should feel this way at this stage in your life. With all due respect to all that you have created in your life, including your family, it’s been based on a very limited version of your true self. As a triple Aries ( Sun, Moon and Ascendant ) and a New Moon baby, the kind of excessively stable, ritualised and by the sound of it, rather duty bound life style is a kind of slow death, if the core need of all that Aries energy for new horizons, inspirations and challenges is not met.

The essence of Aries is driven by the need to express passionately and forthrightly your true individuality in the world, as a pioneer, innovator and instigator. Click 'Read More' below to continue reading...

There doesn’t appear to be much of that in your world. This part of you must be restless, frustrated, irritable and basically, bored! However, there are understandable reasons as to why this is the case and, these don’t invalidate the importance of your family and your need to have done what you’ve done in the first half of this life.

However turbo-charged your Aries essence is innately, your Sun and Moon are directly opposite Neptune in Libra on your Descendent, the cusp of the house of long term relationships. On one level, this explains the split that you feel, between the Aries drive and the Neptunian desire for a spiritually connected life. Initially, these will manifest as polar opposites and it’s fair to say that they’ve effectively cancelled each other out, so neither end is happy or working well.

At its best Neptune does represent the urge to meditate and engage in other spiritual practices because it is one of the symbols of our spirituality and the longing for union with the divine. Its shadow though contains two very tricky expressions; a tendency to anaesthetise and a lack of clear boundaries with the energy and needs of others.

Neptune has the effect of watering down the fire of Aries and dilutes its individual potency by excessively exposing the person psychically to the needs, desires and expectations of others. This is partly due to a powerful ability to empathise, unhealthily combined with poor boundaries and one that confuses the individual about their own needs, while sub-consciously putting everyone else’s first.

This is a great paradox in regard to Aries, which is one of the signs most forthright in expressing its own needs (and in some individuals descends into self-absorption, selfishness and narcissism.) Neptune on the other hand can turn a person into a passive, helpful, accommodating chameleon who is both martyr and a psychic extension of everyone else’s needs. And significant others get used to this availability in you, while underneath your true self seethes. No wonder then that you long for some escape, to somewhere where you can be a courageous explorer of the unknown, however loving and beautiful your family is.

The good news around this is that transiting Uranus, a great awakener and initiator of liberating change, will start to cross your Aries Sun, Moon and Ascendant next year. This will serve to crack open this old pattern and support you to reclaim your passion, vitality and natural individualism.

You don’t have to abandon your family. They may not like the changes but you need them and ultimately they will too.

There is an even bigger reason though, why you’re being drawn so strongly to meditate. Your North Node of the Moon is in Pisces in the 12th House, describing the visions of what your soul wants to achieve in this second half of your life. Summarising, its states that after working through much karma in your first 60 years to do with duty, service and responsibility, your soul is calling you to the 12th House, a house of spirituality, mysticism, of the inner worlds and a greater expression of your sense of service to others.

And you know what? The opposition from Aries to Neptune eventually turns into a powerful unity of the sign’s fiery, passionate individualism with the elaborate psychospiritual gifts of Neptune. It points towards you becoming a spiritual warrior or what Andrew Harvey describes as the Sacred Activist.

And a big part of this inherent giftedness in you is that you carry great healing potency as well, which is part of what you’re reclaiming. You have Chiron on your Midheaven natally, Progressed Hygeia is close to your North Node and your Mercury is conjunct Hekate, the Medicine Woman. These are all signatures of a natural healer, one that you are in the process of becoming!